1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a method and system for using color and highlighting to display a tree view display. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for providing a non-indented, layered representation of tree view data.
2. Description of the Related Art
One of the highest priorities of information technology (IT) organizations responsible with managing mission-critical computing environments is understanding the various components, or objects, that comprise the business system. With increased computer power and advanced networking equipment and tools, even small businesses often have complex business systems. Managing and understanding these increasingly complex systems is an increasingly challenging task.
As used herein, a “business system” serves the needs of the organization's business functions, such as order entry, marketing, accounts receivable, and the like. A business system may span several dissimilar types of computers and be distributed throughout many geographical locations. A business system, in turn, is typically based upon several application programs. An application program may also span several dissimilar types of computers and be distributed throughout a network of computer systems.
An application typically serves a particular function that is needed by the business system. An individual application program may, or may not, be critical to the business system depending upon the role the application program plays within the overall business system. Using networked computers, an application may span several computer systems. In an Internet commerce system, for example, an application program that is part of the company's order processing business system, may be responsible for serving web pages to users browsing the companies online catalog. This application may use several computer systems in various locations to better serve the customers and provide faster response to customer inquiries.
The application may use some computers running one type of operating system, for example a UNIX-based operating system such as IBM's AIX® operating system, while other computer systems may run another type of server operating system such as Microsoft's Windows NT® Server operating system. Individual computer systems work together to provide the processing power needed to run the business systems and application programs. These computer systems may be mainframes, mid-range systems, workstations, personal computers, or any other type of computer that includes at least one processor and can be programmed to provide processing power to the business systems and applications. Applications also manage an organizations data, stored in databases that may be organized in various fashions. Some database files, such as a customer file, may be used by several applications, while other database files are only used by a single application.
Computer systems, in turn, include individual resources that provide various functionality to the computer systems. For example, a modem is an individual resource that allows a computer system to link to another computer system through an communication network. A router is another individual resource that routes electronic messages between computer systems.
Computers are often linked to one another using a network, such as a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), or other types of networks such as the Internet. By linking computers, one computer can use resources owned by another computer system. These resources can include files stored on nonvolatile storage devices and resources such as printers. Smaller computers used by an individual (client computers) are often linked to more powerful computers, called servers, that provide large file systems, larger processing capabilities, and resources not typically found on client computers. Servers may be larger PCs, workstations, or mainframe computer systems.
Applications, database, computers, and networks are all examples of categories, or groups, of objects used by an organization. Because of the interrelationships between objects, the number of different categories of objects, and the vast number of objects in most organizations, mapping and understanding the business system is a difficult challenge to address. Indeed, any system that has large numbers of objects in many categories with relationships is difficult to conceptually understand using tools available today.
What is needed, therefore, is a way of visually presenting complex information by grouping objects into layers and providing different display attributes to aid the user in distinguishing between the various displayed layers.